It isn’t that an additional interstate in Texas is a bad idea – but the project was frightfully flawed from the beginning.

The ambitious proposal to create the Trans-Texas Corridor network has been dropped in response to public outcry and will be replaced with a plan to carry out road projects at an incremental, modest pace, state officials said Tuesday.

"The Trans-Texas Corridor, as a single-project concept, is not the choice of Texans, so we decided to put the name to rest," said Amadeo Saenz Jr., executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, at the agency's annual Texas Transportation Forum in Austin. "To be clear, the Trans-Texas Corridor as it is known, no longer exists."

The state will move forward with a series of individual projects that had been considered part of the Trans-Texas Corridor plan, he said. Among those is the Interstate 69 project, which, as proposed, would run from Texarkana to Laredo or the Rio Grande Valley.

Saenz said overwhelming public response was a key factor in the agency's decision to abandon the plan, and he pledged that the agency would rely heavily on input from Texans through more town hall meetings and an updated Web site.

"One practical lesson we've taken away from this experience is, we need to do a better job of communicating," he said. "We need to do a better job of listening."

And listening was the problem – Texans woke up one day to find that the state had approved a massive highway project that would involve the use of eminent domain for a for-profit highway that would benefit a foreign company, but not the Texas taxpayer. What’s more, the access to the highway would be so limited that the highway would essentially bypass the cities and towns of Texas – vehicles would essentially get on at the border with Mexico and exit at the northern border of the state, with few exits or entrances in between.

Posted by: Greg at 01:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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